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IEEE History Center
Rutgers University
39 Union Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8538
Contact: Michael N. Geselowitz, Ph.D., Staff
Director
IEEE History Center
Telephone: 732-632-5450
Email: ieee-history@ieee.org
Websites:
http://www.ieee.org/history_center
http://www.ieeeghn.org
The mission of the IEEE History Center is to preserve, research
and make known the history of information and electrical technologies.
IEEE, the membership organization for engineers and scientists
in electrical, electronic, information and computing fields,
is the largest professional technical society in the world. Tracing
its origins to 1884, IEEE now has over 400,000 members in more
than 160 countries, 333 sections in 10 geographic regions worldwide,
and 1,855 student branches at colleges and universities in 80
countries.
Since the inception of its current structure, in 1963, IEEE
has had a standing History Committee advising the IEEE Board
of Directors on matters of the legacy and heritage of IEEE and
its members and their related professions and technologies, and
carrying out some activities in those areas. In 1980, in anticipation
of its Centennial celebration in 1984, IEEE established the IEEE
History Center to be the staff arm of the History Committee. In
1990, the Center moved to the campus of Rutgers University, which
became a cosponsor. Within IEEE, the History Center is part of
IEEE Corporate Activities, and at Rutgers it is affiliated with
the History Department of the New Brunswick Campus School of
Arts and Sciences. In 2010, the Center also entered into a cooperative
agreement with the University of California, Merced, in order
to have a presence near the high-tech centers of the U.S.'s west
coast.
IEEE Milestone Plaque
Today, IEEE’s central historical activities are carried out
largely by the staff of the History Center, under the guidance
of the History Committee. The full-time staff consists of four
Ph.D.-level historians, an electronic content manager, and a research
coordinator, and they are assisted by Rutgers history graduate
assistants and, at various times, different interns and work-study
students. The Center approaches its mission through a series
of programs, most notably:
- Milestones: The IEEE established the IEEE Milestones in Electrical
Engineering and Computing in 1983 to honor significant events
in the history of its technical fields at the local geographical
level; there are currently over 100 commemorative plaques in
every IEEE Region.
- Oral Histories: The Center conducts interviews with leading
engineers and scientists. There are more than 450 full transcripts
available to the public on-line.
- IEEE STARS: STARS is an online compendium of invited, peer-reviewed
articles on the history of major developments in electrical
and computer science and technology. Although written for a
general audience, these articles are meant to provide authoritative
information, valuable in itself, but also useful as starting
points for further investigations.
- Conferences: About every other year, a conference is held
under the auspices of the History Center on a particular topic
of technological history; the aim is to uniquely bring together
historians of a field with practitioners in that field.
The Center also manages IEEE’s programs of support for
external historians of technology, including a paper prize awarded
through the Society for the History of technology, a graduate
fellowship, and a summer internship.
IEEE Global History Network
In 2008, the Center launched a new wiki-based platform called
the IEEE
Global History Network, or GHN, through which most of the
Centers resources are now available to the general public. In
addition, on the GHN IEEE members can contribute to topic articles
on the history of their fields and also record the personal histories
of their involvement in technological innovation. |
